


Stargazing

by BuzzCat



Series: Queerity Falls [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Bisexual Female Character, Coming Out, Family Bonding, Family Fluff, Gen, in which none of your faves are straight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 20:12:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14722826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuzzCat/pseuds/BuzzCat
Summary: “Hard conversations are easier to have if you aren’t looking at each other. I figured this would be easier than convincing you to go on a road trip.”In which both Stan and Mabel freak out over nothing and it's all good. All comfort, no hurt.





	Stargazing

Stan lay on his back, staring up at the stars. Mabel had dragged him out here to go stargazing. She was laying beside him, looking up and just taking in the night sky.

It was strange, being out here. The twins were up for the last couple weeks of the summer before heading back to college after their birthday. Mabel was in her early twenties now, way too old to be hanging out going stargazing with her great-uncle. And besides, he wasn’t the great-uncle to go stargazing with. Ford was the one who knew the life cycles of the stars, who knew all the constellations and stuff. Hell, Dipper knew more constellations than him and Dipper only knew one of them because it was stamped on his forehead.

When Stan pointed all of this out to Mabel though, she had simply shrugged, “Well I know that, but I want to go with you. Do you wanna go stargazing with me? Pretty pretty please?”

Stan had rolled his eyes, “I’m bringing my back pillow.” Mabel had grinned and agreed, dashing off to grab it for him. Stan thought her grin looked a little too wide to be real, but he’d let it slide. He had an inkling over the past couple days that something was brewing in his great-niece’s mind, but he’d decided to give her space until she was ready to talk it out. It never took long anyway before she brought up whatever she was thinking.

And now here they were, lying down in the middle of the lawn and just looking up at the sky. The summer night kept it from getting too cold but Mabel still seemed to be curled in a little bit. He looked over at her,

“You cold, pumpkin?”

“Hm? Nah, I’m good.” Stan studied her face. She was biting her lip and fiddling with the hem of her sweater, a habit that only appeared when she was nervous about something. Stan frowned and said slowly,

“Was there a reason you wanted me to come stargazing with you tonight?”

Mabel laughed nervously, “What? No! There definitely wasn’t a particular reason or thing I wanted to talk to you about.”

Stan raised an eyebrow, “Uh huh. You just thought you’d go stargazing, dragging an old man out of his nice comfortable bed and make him lay in the dirt all night.” Mabel hesitated, then spoke up,

“Hard conversations are easier to have if you aren’t looking at each other. I figured this would be easier than convincing you to go on a road trip.”

“Hard conversations? Is something wrong?” He started to sit up but Mabel flung out an arm, nearly smacking him in the face as she grabbed his arm,

“Nope! Looking at me entirely defeats the point of stargazing. You have to look at the sky.”

Stan reluctantly lay back down, Mabel not removing her arm until he was on the ground again. He looked at the sky, ignoring how his pulse kept shooting up and up, his thoughts racing. What kind of conversation did Mabel want to have? He and his great-niece had had every kind of scary, wacky, and insane conversation there was. Shoot, she’d had to tell him she needed tampons that first summer and even then she hadn’t made him look at the sky. Stan could feel himself starting to sweat, though that could have just been the summer heat getting to him.

“What’s up, kid? What’s going on?”

“Um…I kinda have a thing I have to tell you. And I need you to be cool about it, okay Grunkle Stan?” Drug addictions. Wasting illness. Worst-case scenarios started flashing through Stan’s mind. She was moving across the country. She was moving to a _different_ country. She never wanted to speak to him again because he did something bad. Stan didn’t realize how tense he was or that he’d actually stopped breathing until Mabel sat up and put a hand on his arm, “Grunkle Stan? Just breathe, okay? It’s okay, I swear that whatever you’re thinking, it probably isn’t as bad as that.”

“Really, sweetheart? Because ‘probably’ isn’t exactly the most comforting word.” He looked her in the eye and he could see just how nervous Mabel was. And it was entirely possible that her grunkle laying on the ground and freaking out wasn’t exactly helping. He made himself take a deep breath and he smiled shakily at her, “See? All good. So, uh, what’s the thing you wanted to tell me?”

Mabel let out a frustrated sound and flopped back onto the grass, starfish-style in the middle of the lawn. “Ugh, this is just such a weird thing to try to explain. And I don’t think I can just explain it because I don’t know if you’ll know what I’m talking about and—”

“Wow, slow your roll kiddo. How about you just try saying the thing and if I don’t know what you’re saying, I’ll let you know, okay?”

Mabel thought for a second before saying, “I guess that’s fair. Okay,” she took a deep breath, “you know how girls like boys?”

Suddenly Stan knew with one-hundred percent certainty that this was a conversation he was not prepared to hear.

“Oh god, you’re not pregnant, are you?” Mabel was still a kid. She hadn’t even finished college yet, for fuck’s sake, she was way too young for this.

Mabel laughed, “No, Grunkle Stan, I’m not pregnant.” He let out a sigh of relief. _Thank Moses_. Mabel continued, “It’s just, uh, you know how girls like boys? I like girls like that too.”

Stan relaxed as he felt all of the panic go whooshing out of him in a relieved chuckle, “Oh, you’re, what’s the word, bisexual.”

Mabel shot up from the ground and stared at Stan, “Wait, you know that word?”

“Duh, I know that word. It’s not like you kids invented not being straight,” he said, still laughing. All that panic over a little thing like being bisexual.

“How? I mean, you’re all old and live in the woods in the middle of nowhere.”

“Kid, it’s not like I always lived in the middle of nowhere. And I mean, you know how boys like girls? I like boys that way too.”

“Wait, _you’re_ bisexual?” Mabel asked, eyes like saucers and eyebrows up to her hairline. Stan sat up, grumping and trying to ignore all the old man aches that sank in from laying on the hard ground for too long. He looked at Mabel and shrugged,

“I mean, yeah. Always have been.”

“But why didn’t you _say_ anything? We could have been bonding over cute boys and cute girls and—oh my God, I could have been _matchmaking_.” There were actual stars in Mabel’s eyes. Stan shuddered at the thought of twelve-year-old Mabel trying to set him up. He still hadn’t forgotten about the Lazy Susan-inspired training montage and following debacle.

“I never said anything because it wasn’t important. I mean, what kid wants to hear that their grunkle is into boy and girls?”

“The kind of kid who is _also_ into boys and girls, Grunkle Stan,” Mabel said in exasperation. She was quiet a moment before asking, “Wait, actually why didn’t you tell us? You know Dipper doesn’t really care about that kind of stuff and I am literally the last person to judge who you love, so what gives, Grunkle Stan?”

“Like I said, it really wasn’t relevant. I mean, when you gremlins showed up I was trying to get Ford back and after that it just wasn’t ever all that important.”

“Grunkle Stan,” Mabel reached out and grabbed his face with both her hands, making him look at her as she said in her Serious Voice, “there is nothing more important than love.”

“Yeah yeah, love conquers all and everything else,” he said, rolling his eyes. Mabel smiled and let go of him, laying back down on the ground.

“So just to double check, we’re good? There’s nothing weird happening here and you’re good with me liking girls too?”

Stan laid back down and reached out, grabbing Mabel’s hand, “Sweetie, we are great. Thanks for telling me.”

They both looked back up at the stars. Mabel reached up and traced some lines between stars,

“So do you think that one looks like Ford’s face?”


End file.
